"Life is hard when you don’t know who you are. It’s harder when you don’t know *what* you are. ...
I was lost for years. Searching while hiding. ...
I won’t hide anymore. I will live the life I choose."
-- Bo Dennis, "Lost Girl"

therefore, be it resolved that: this blog is intended for mature readers.

However, this blog is not age-restricted.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Do Different Languages Confer Different Personalities?

From the "Johnson" language blog at The Economist:

Many multilinguals report different personalities, or even different worldviews, when they speak their different languages.

It’s an exciting notion, the idea that one’s very self could be broadened by the mastery of two or more languages. In obvious ways (exposure to new friends, literature and so forth) the self really is broadened. Yet it is different to claim—as many people do—to have a different personality when using a different language. A former Economist colleague, for example, reported being ruder in Hebrew than in English. So what is going on here?

Benjamin Lee Whorf, an American linguist who died in 1941, held that each language encodes a worldview that significantly influences its speakers.

Google+ Badge

About the Author

"Liviana" is the philosophical nom de plume of Giovanna Laine, in a nod to the practice among the American thinkers who debated Confederation and Federalism during the late 1700s, writing in The Federalist Papers and The Anti-Federalist Papers under such Roman noms de plume as Cato, Publius, Brutus, etc.

A philosopher, logician, and linguist by training, a huge fan of Star Trek, a gamer, and a member and supporter of the Green Party of the United States, Miss Laine also loves to cook Italian cuisine. A native Texan, she currently resides somewhere in the wilderness of the American South with three cats, several guitars, a few firearms, and an extensive library of books, magazines, journals, comic books, videos, and music.

And yes, guys, she has a boyfriend.

The Author

"Liviana" (Giovanna Laine)

About the Names

"Liviana" is Latin for "Livia-like," or "Similar to Livia." Several Roman women had the name Livia, including the wife of Augustus Caesar (Livia Drusilla, later known as Julia Augusta, regarded by some historians as "the first Empress of Rome"). The original meaning of livius, livia, and livium would have been "dark bluish grey," and the modern English word "livid" derives from the related Latin word "lividus." "Liviana" as a personal name would therefore mean something like "similar to Livia" (as noted above) in reference to some similarity to another woman whose name was Livia, or "similar to dark bluish grey" in some way.

However, the author adopted the name primarily in honor of the Star Trek character Liviana t'Charvanek (aka Di'on t'Charvon, aka Thea), a Romulan woman who commanded not one Romulan warbird, but a fleet of at least three vessels of the Romulan Star Navy, at a time when women in the United Federation of Planets were not allowed to command even a single starship in Starfleet (later series have retconned this restriction, but it seems to have been regarded as "canon" during the time when TOS was in production and for some time afterwards):

Livia is a Latin name (the feminine form of "Livius" and not a short form of "Olivia," although it certainly can be used as such), and not Hebrew. The Hebrew word confused with "Livia" on a few baby name websites is actually "Lavi" ("L'via" or "Levia" in modern Hebrew), which means "Lioness," and which is linguistically unrelated to the Latin name "Livia." The transliterated /v/ in "Lavi" represents a "doubled" Hebrew letter Beth, with the sound of an English /v/, while the /v/ in "Livia" is in no need of transliteration, but represents the sound of an English /w/ in Classical Latin. Thus, LAH-vee or lə-VEE-ah versus LIH-wee-ə exposes the reality that the seeming similarity is an illusion based solely on orthography without phonetic basis. Moreover, the etymology of the two names also varies, with one deriving from Proto-Canaanite (a Semitic language) and the other from Proto-Italic (an Indo-European language); the two names do not even have the same meaning. No doubt should exist that "Livia" is a Latin (Roman) name, at least for anyone with formal training in Linguistics and Classical Latin.

The blog is called "Random Musings from a Muse," because the author may discuss (or "muse upon") a wide variety of (seemingly "random") topics, ranging from philosophy and logic to linguistic matters and even her latest culinary experiment, in the hope of inspiring others to think and create (and so she seeks to act as a "muse" in some sense).